President Barack Obama used his first State of the Union address since winning re-election to put education at the center of his broader strategy to bolster the nation's economic prospects. He is proposing to dramatically expand preschool access for low- and middle-income children and to create a new competitive program aimed at helping high school students prepare for the careers of the future. But the administration has yet to spell out the details--including additional funding, if any--of those proposals, particularly the preschool expansion. Big questions loom, including how the administration plans to entice states to participate in what's being billed as a new federal-state preschool partnership, and how the White House would seek to pay for the plan and get it through a Congress that is trying to head off cuts to existing programs, not create new ones.